The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival (24 page)

The child moves slowly, like she’s just been given a heavy dose of valium. Her bloodshot eyes seem unfocused and she stands in the middle of the room looking around as if the concept of four walls and a ceiling was an alien one.

“Come here, baby girl,” Teddy says, reaching to her. “Angela and Carl were taking care of stuff at the funeral home, so Kanita came with me,” he says by way of explanation. “They just flew in from Texas. That’s why I couldn’t make it sooner.”

Kanita shuffles over and rests her head against Teddy’s hip.

“Hi, Father Steve,” she says, and sniffles a bit.

“Hi,” I say, then look at Teddy, confused. “This is Kanita?”

“Yeah.” He says it like a sigh.

“Man, she’s grown,” I say, still processing. “I don’t remember. Did we ever meet?” I look at both of them. Teddy answers.

“Probably not. But Mawmaw talked about you enough, I guess.”

Then Kanita speaks. “I got a picture of you and Grandmawmaw.”

I look at Teddy, try to swallow the lump in my throat.

“It was the only recent picture of herself that Mawmaw liked. She gave it to Kanita,” Teddy explains.

Oh, that was it. Vanity, thy name is Rita. And Steve.

“We got other pictures, too, at Mama’s house,” Kanita says.

We look at her.

“Grandmawmaw gave ’em to Mama. Photo albums. One, she’s holding you when you were a baby. One of your first communion. One of you in a purple robe.”

“Graduation,” I say. “High school.” My eyes are stinging now.

I feel guilty all of a sudden. Guilty about not visiting enough, guilty about not being here at the end, guilty about being in the midst of a self-pitying drunk instead, guilty about being hungover this morning, about hiding the tapes.

I am a worthless piece of shit, I feel like saying to them.

And Kanita’s just standing there, staring at me as if I have an answer, something to make sense of this, to explain why her great-grandmother was not in her room, was instead being placed in a silk-lined box somewhere. I have a direct line to God and Jesus, after all, don’t I? I should be able to simply look up, mouth a few words, listen, and then translate.

But here I am, hungover and strung out on self-pity and self-loathing. I look to Teddy, who’s eyeing me closely, quite possibly praying that this white guy can keep his shit together and not scare his niece.

I swallow the lump in my throat, choke down as much of my selfishness as I can stand, and cough out the rest. “Well,” I say, slipping the key to the nightstand out of my pocket.

“Teddy, there’s something in the nightstand,” I say, handing him the key. “I thought you’d want it.”

Teddy walks to the nightstand, places the key in the lock. “It’s not her bottle of Crown and a bag of—” he starts, but stops when he sees the drawer’s contents.

“I listened to a couple just to see what they were,” I say, fingering the unlabeled tape still in my pocket. That one’s mine.

It’s Teddy’s turn now to struggle with his emotions. I want to tell him not to get too worked up over them. But, hell, let him savor the moment.

Teddy fingers one of the tapes, places it into the recorder.

“Um, Teddy,” I say, shooting a glance over at Kanita. “Probably not now.”

“What?” Kanita says, quick enough to catch on to adult subterfuge.

“Nothing, baby girl,” Teddy tells her, and closes the drawer. “Why don’t you go get that box out of the car?”

She eyes us suspiciously, but does as she’s told.

“She seems to be taking it well,” I say.

“Not really. Usually, she would have fought me to see what was in this drawer.” He pauses. “You sure I can have these?”

“You’re her family, Teddy.” But I want them, damn it, want them all. What else did she say about me? Which conversations did she tape? How much of my own voice is on those tapes, how many of my confessions? “You’ll have kids you can pass them on to or something.”

“You okay, Father?” Teddy asks.

“Huh? Yeah. Yeah, Teddy. Rough night last night,” I say, and offer an impish grin, thinking Teddy might give me one of those little shocked looks, say something like “Aw, now, c’mon, Father Steve. C’mon now.” And I would say, “Well, priests gotta have fun, too.” And the two of us would chuckle knowingly.

Instead, Teddy says, “Hmph.”

I can’t tell if it’s a judgmental “hmph” or a dismissive “hmph.”

Baptists.

“Well,” I say finally, “I sorted everything, took some of the stuff Daddy and us gave her if yall don’t mind.”

“No. Not at all.” Teddy drifts off somewhere and I fall into my own little world until Kanita comes back, wrestling with the cumbersome box.

“I guess I’ll be going,” I say.

“Yeah, okay,” Teddy answers.

“You’ll call me about the church arrangements?”

Teddy looks down at his hands sheepishly.

“Teddy?”

“You knew she wanted to be buried out at Zion, right?”

My heart lurches. “Yeah, Teddy. I knew.” But I hadn’t. I’d never asked. I’d assumed for the last year or so that when the time came, I’d be the one.

It’s like being told my own mother is being interred by the ayatollah.

“Yeah. No, I knew, Teddy,” I say again. “Just let me know when.”

“Sure thing, Father. Sure thing.”

For lack of a better idea, I drive to Daddy’s house, where I find the family gathered.

Daddy’s is a beast of a house vaguely reminiscent of Mawmaw’s old place. It’s elegant in its own way, but seems slightly ludicrous just sitting out here in the middle of nowhere. Even though it’s an hour and a half from anything remotely resembling a town, they’ve all come.

All told, counting me and the spouses and children, twenty-nine people are clamoring about Daddy’s house. My uncle Red and his wife, Joanne, and their children, Bubba, Tiffany, and Johnny. Bubba, who’s my age, is married with two kids, Tiffany married with one child, and Johnny’s girlfriend is pregnant with what everyone assumes is his first child.

My aunt Belinda has four children, all girls, through her first marriage. Her second husband, Donald, added another two. Of Rachel, Jessica, Jenny, and Wendy, Belinda’s original four, Rachel has two boys and Jenny has two girls. Wendy’s pregnant with her first and Jessica is in college and, even more surprisingly, single. Lisa and Lucy, the stepsisters, are so far without child.

Here they all are, as if they were animals and the presence of death had prompted a herding instinct. I bring the box of reminders in and they offer me coffee.

At some point we all settle in. Even the grandkids—who are usually tearing around the yard like small tornadoes—trickle into the living room and, like lions after a hunt, seek comfortable refuge for their weary bones—the little ones in the laps of their mothers, the larger ones in front of the fireplace, at odd angles in easy chairs, draped over the backs and arms of couches like cats on branches.

It’s time for what I call the Book of the Dead.

The Book of the Dead is not reserved only for sad days like this one. It’s trotted out at every family gathering, usually right after a heavy meal and immediately before we start in on the really tall tales. In essence, it’s a catalog of all those distant relatives and local legends who’ve died since the last clan meeting—with the true standouts getting repeat tellings.

These stories aren’t so much a running obituary column as they are a celebration of just how, shall we say, interesting some of our relatives were. Nonc Enios, for example, who, aside from having what I always thought was a silly name, was blind as a bat but insisted on driving his ’73 Ford pickup everywhere, lurching to stops, zigzagging across roads, accelerating too fast but never going above thirty miles per hour. Everyone called him “speedy,” and it never failed to get a rise out of him. “Aw, go on. Yall go to hell,” he’d say. “Dat’s about twice as fast as dat ole mule-drawn wagon used to go, so it’s plenty fast for me.”

Aunt Irene, Uncle Albert’s wife, who never visited except for funerals and only then after being heavily sedated. She was deathly afraid of the bridges over the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers. During their construction, the Mississippi bridge had taken a brother, the Atchafalaya a cousin. She was convinced that they would get her, too, if she tried crossing.

Uncle Koko, who—well, suffice it to say that the story about him and the cow isn’t fit for mixed company.

There are more. Great-aunts and uncles, third cousins by marriage, the retarded kid who used to live down the street and would chase Daddy and them home from school every day. Everyone will get a turn eventually.

Most of the dead have met their ends at the hands of “the cancer.” Runner-up is heart attack and third is “catching a stroke.” And if those don’t get you, be sure that freak accidents—hungry farm machinery, exploding tanks, falling trees—will.

For the first time in my life, I’m a primary participant in this ritual, having put in my time with Miss Rita over the past few years.

But I find myself talking about Mawmaw’s death instead of Miss Rita’s, perhaps because the pain is too close to deal with, perhaps because Mawmaw’s death is what had really bonded me and Miss Rita together.

It seemed from the day I was born, Mawmaw was locked in battle with the cancer. In the final go-round, doctors had told her she probably wouldn’t see 1987. But the summer of ’85 found Mawmaw, in a burst of good health and spirits, puttering about in her garden. I was twelve and more than a little resentful at having to spend the time with her—she didn’t seem sick, seemed perfectly fine, was probably faking it for the attention from her grandchildren who were running off into adolescence and leaving her behind as if she were some sort of embarrassing relic from childhood, a stuffed animal, a security blanket.

So while Mawmaw moved about under her wide-brimmed hat, I sat on the back porch reading adventure stories about a boy lost with his dog in the wilderness.

Then she yelped from behind a four o’clock bush.

“Fils de putaint!”
she yelled.

“You okay, Mawmaw?” I called, not looking up from the book. Never in a million years would she curse in English in front of us, but she was quick with the Cajun French swears. That she’d just screamed out “son of a bitch” probably meant little more than she’d scratched her arm on a branch.

There was a brief silence before she answered.

“Jus a lil’ bee sting, cher. Nuttin’ to worry about.”

I rolled my eyes. Even when no one was around, I found her heavy Cajun accent embarrassing beyond belief.

Looking back, I always wondered if there was something in her voice at the time to betray her lie, a wavering, a sharp inhalation. I looked up for a brief moment. She was walking from the shrub she’d been working on to another, clenching and unclenching her fist. The sun was so bright it hurt my eyes.

“You sure you okay, Mawmaw? You want one of your cigarettes to rub some tobacco on it?” I held up her pack of Winstons.

“No, cher. You stay up there and read your book.” Then, “Always wished I could read.” Then, “I’ll be okay. Just stay up there.”

Five minutes later, though, the four o’clock bush she was tinkering with shuddered heavily, some of the petals falling to the ground. When I ran over to see what had happened, I found her facedown in the bush, her breathing shallow.

“Mawmaw!” I hissed at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Leave me be, Stevie.”

“But, Mawmaw.”

“Stevie, leave me be, I said.” She gasped for air. “Go on in the house and get Miss Rita and tell her to get a shovel.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Now go. Tell her to get a shovel.”

And those were her last words. I ran off into the house and straight for the kitchen.

“Boy, what’s wrong with you?” Miss Rita yelled at me. “Quit runnin’ in the house before I grab that switch,” she added, her hand already reaching for the three-foot length of crape myrtle branch above the fridge.

“Mawmaw. Bee stung her. Shovel. She said to tell you grab a shovel.”

“What?” Miss Rita answered. “Slow down and tell me what happened.” But she was already turning the stove down to a simmer, wiping her hands on a towel, and following me out to the flower garden.

Mawmaw hadn’t moved. She was still facedown, her breathing shallow.

“Didn’t have the sense to turn her over,” Miss Rita said. Then we saw the puncture wounds between the thumb and index finger on the right hand. The area was a mixed rainbow of purple and black, with red streaking up the arm.

“She got stung twice?” I asked.

Miss Rita looked at me for a second. She didn’t have to say it out loud, but I could tell what she was thinking: “Boy, you stupid or something?” Instead, she said, “Stevie, you go to your mawmaw’s bedroom, get that shotgun in the closet, and bring it back. Make sure it got some shells in it.”

“You want me to call an ambulance or something?”

“Just do what I said,” she screamed.

I ran back to the house. It was the first time I’d ever heard it silent during the day. No humming. No talking. No wash being done. No dishes being banged. Something was seriously, seriously wrong. I ran to the closet, reached an arm through the clothes, and felt for the shotgun. I cracked open the chamber and saw two shells nesting in the barrels. I ran it back to Miss Rita. She cracked open the chamber, then snapped it shut again.

“Now go get a shovel,” she said.

“Don’t you think I should—”

“You should go get a shovel like I said.”

Halfway back from the garage, shovel in hand, I heard a shot. I sped up, convinced that Miss Rita had shot Mawmaw to put her out of her misery. Country people did that all the time to their animals. Why not to people, too?

“What did you do?” I screamed. “What did you do?”

But she was standing over that first four o’clock, the one Mawmaw had been fooling with when she screamed out. Miss Rita put a hand over her eyes, squinted into the bush. She lifted the gun to her shoulder and fired the other shell. A flurry of leaves exploded into the sunlight.

She held her hand out. “Just hush and bring me that shovel.” She took it from me, parted the bushes, and drove the shovel through like a spear. Her forehead glistened with sweat and I suddenly realized how hot it was, that I was sweating, too. My shirt stuck to my back and I could feel the itch I always got on my legs from running through tall grass.

“Son of a bitch,” Miss Rita whispered, dragging first the head, then the shot-riddled body of a two-foot-long rattlesnake. It was so ridiculously small. How could that take someone’s life?

But everyone agreed, it was a much better way to die than the cancer. None of those messy drawn-out good-byes to deal with.

“She went in her garden,” Daddy says, “doing what she liked to do.”

We stay up late into the night and I sleep in the guest bedroom. I wake up the next morning before everyone else and head back to Grand Prairie, hoping to catch a snippet of Mass, see who Mark has lined up. I don’t feel like dealing with him right now, but Mass will do me good, help me to clear my mind, even if it will be a bit jarring to see someone else in my church, leading my flock.

About four miles from Grand Prairie, I see a telephone pole wearing a couple of Rabbit Festival posters. Oh yeah. That.

About three miles from Grand Prairie, I see a pole covered from the ground up to about eight feet with bright yellow posters. I slow the car to a crawl. T
ENT
R
EVIVAL
screams the headline right above the dates—which, sure enough, are the same dates on the Rabbit Festival posters.

“Son of a bitch,” I say. I don’t know how the mind works, but mine had done a good job of pretending the revival was just something to worry about at a later date. The posters drive the reality home.

The next pole is covered in neon-pink posters. The one after that in yellow. Just past that pole, an army of yard signs shouting T
ENT
R
EVIVAL
: A
PRIL
15–17 march off over the horizon.

“Fuck me,” I say, before following them all the way back to my own church.

At least the cars in St. Pete’s parking lot indicate that Mark came through with a substitute. Either that or the congregation is hanging out in the church for lack of anything better to do on a Sunday morning. I pull into my parking space—why didn’t the visiting priest take it?—and enter the church through the entrance near the rectory. The church is silent. I must have walked in during the meditation after the Eucharist. I hang back and wait for the priest to speak, not quite certain I’m ready to look at all those upturned faces, looking for guidance, needing.

“Please rise,” an all-too-familiar voice says.

It can’t be. I stick my head into the entrance to the altar and there stands Mark, blessing my parishioners, offering them the sign of peace. It’s all I can do not to walk out onto the altar and drag him off by his hair.

Enraged, I stomp back to the rectory.

Ten minutes later, Mark comes in whistling. “Steve-o?” he calls out. “You home? How you holding up? Boy, do I have some news for you!”

I’m sitting in the recliner, staring at the blank TV. If I stand up, I’ll start punching him.

“Hey, Steve.”

“Get out,” I say.

“What?”

“You heard me. Get your stuff, pack your bags. Get out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about? How about you, no longer a priest, going out on my altar?”

“C’mon. I couldn’t find anyone. No one could get out here yesterday. So I figured—”

“You said Mass yesterday, too?”

“Well, someone had to do it.”

I stand up, shouting. “Someone? Sure. How about a real priest? You quit, remember? Did that occur to you before you went traipsing out onto my altar in my church?” It feels good to scream. And Mark happens to provide a welcome target.

But he’s not taking it without a fight.

“Your altar? I thought that belonged to the parishioners, not to you.”

“It’s my ass on the line once the bishop finds out I let some Lavender Mafioso ex-priest say Mass.”

“Fuck you, Steve. You think the bishop gives a rat’s ass what goes on in this backwater? What with your altar girls, your whenever-you-feel-like-it morning prayers, your half-ass way of doing everything. And hell, even Vicky. It’s not like you’re a bunch of saints back here.”

“What the hell is that Vicky comment supposed to mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You tell me.”

There’s only one way to answer that. “Just shut the hell up, Mark. Just shut the hell up and leave.”

“Where am I supposed to go, Steve?”

“Not my problem. Why don’t you call up Mommy and Daddy? I’m sure your daddy would just love to have his strapping young lad back home.”

I immediately regret saying it, but probably not as much as I should.

Mark storms off into his room, packs a bag, then walks into the bathroom to gather his hair product and skin creams and whatever the hell else is taking up all the shelf space in there. After throwing his bag into the car, he comes back in and makes a teary phone call.

“Yeah, right now. I have no idea,” is all I can make out. I don’t know who he’s called.

After Mark puts the phone down, he starts calling for Chase.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I ask.

“I’m calling my cat, is what I’m doing.”